Lisa Bluder Postgame Transcript

Feb. 24, 2011

PARDON OUR PROGRESS! As friends of the University of Iowa and fans of the Hawkeyes know, the UI Athletics Department is well into a multi-million dollar revitalization of Carver-Hawkeye Arena. This important and exciting project has reduced for this season the number of ticket windows that are operational on game nights. Fans attending the home events of the 2010-11 UI men’s basketball, women’s basketball and wrestling teams are invited to avoid game night delays by purchasing their event tickets online or in advance of game day. If your schedule doesn’t allow for an advance purchase, we recommend you consider arriving at the Arena a little earlier than originally planned. Go Hawks!

COACH BLUDER: Good win for us. It was a one point game with seven, seven and a half minutes to go. I think we went on an 18 3 run at that point. We got our transition going. Thought we had some nice passes in transition to find the open player. We hit our free throws down the stretch. We started rebounding a little bit better. We were getting out rebounded in the first half, beginning of the second half. Last minutes of the game, we closed that and only lost the rebound war by one, which is remarkable really. Good win. Good way for Kach and Kelsey to go out. We have one road game left.

Q. Talk a little bit about the defense tonight. 22 turnovers, six blocks, nine steals. You were really active out there.

COACH BLUDER: Karisma Penn has 12 points, but she had 33 against Michigan State. She’s a handful. She’s an incredible player, averaging a double double. We held her to eight rebounds. I thought we did a really good job with our traps. I thought we did a really nice job of creating turnovers. We forced 22 turnovers in those situations, and we converted off of them. We got 25 points off of those turnovers. I thought we did a nice job with that.

Q. One game left in the regular season. What are you looking for from your team as you go on the road?

COACH BLUDER: Every game from now on is on the road. We have to be at our best playing on the road now. Hopefully we’ve learned from it throughout the season. We put ourselves in some situations where we learned to be on the road, how to act on the road, how to perform on the road in different environments. Going to Indiana. A lot riding on this game. There’s so many weird tiebreaking scenarios right now, we’re not sure what happens. We do know if we win, I think we’re guaranteed at least a first round bye.

Q. Will you spend the next couple days going through the tiebreak possibilities? COACH BLUDER: I’ll let Aaron do it. I trust him. He’ll give me a good report on it. I’ll let him figure it out tonight. Q. Coach, talk about winning the rebound battle.

COACH BLUDER: I did not think we were finding a body and really putting a body on them to box out. I thought we were turning around and trying to jump. We’re not going to out jump Illinois. It’s better if we work on the fundamentals and execute that and get the inside position.